When it comes to technology, teachers are too often treated as imbeciles or felons!

In 1990, I was hired to teach public school 4th grade. By that time, I had already been engaging children in collaborative online projects for several years and sbsing a telephone for most of my twenty-seven years on earth. Two days into the school year I rebelled against the absurdity of not having a working telephone in my classroom, went to Radio Shack, purchased a $3 phone splitter, found a barely used telephone sitting in an abandoned office, connected the splitter, and began pulling a spool of phone cable down the school corridor. A custodian noticed my efforts and asked if I would like him to drill a few holes to make the job tidier. A few minutes later, I had a computer connected to the Internet via modem so that my students could work on National Geographic Kids Network science projects. (I could send and receive email too.)

Then as now, I could not understand why other teachers would suffer the indignities associated with not being trusted to use a telephone, 114 years after Bell yelled, “Watson! Come here! I need you!” Yet, the powerlessness continued. For at least another decade, teachers were forced to call their gynecologist from a payphone outside the cafetorium at lunch time.

Schools did not change policies, teachers bought their own damned cellphones and now could join the billions of other people around the world with phone access.

In 2016, educators are sent to workshops I lead with school-supplied laptops incapable of installing an “app,” playing a YouTube video, surfing to a .edu domain, or sending email with an attachment. Some have their USB ports disabled. This is not only a source of embarrassment for seemingly “professional” educators, but wastes precious learning time when those teachers are on the phone to the district IT fascist begging for access to their own “personal computer.” I need to abandon teaching to console grown educators frustrated that they cannot participate in sound educational experiences.

Irrational schools and school district policies quickly turn $1,200 teacher laptops into $100 pieces of sculpture.

Each spring, I receive email messages from educators attending Constructing Modern Knowledge. These messages say, “our school IT paraprofessional would like a list of all the software I will need this summer so he (always a HE) can install it for me.” Aside from this remarkable act of disempowerment and dependency, it misses the entire idea that computers are extensible. You never know which features and functionality that may emerge. I cannot and will not provide a list of software to be installed because that decision is based on the needs of the specific project that institute participants choose to work on.

Ten years ago, I was hired by a university to be a Visiting Professor. As part of my contract negotiations, I was promised a new laptop. When the university reneged, I spent a few grand on my own computer. Despite being a bit poorer, I had a key to the building, an office, and place to park my car. I was trusted to write curricula, teach, and award grades. One day, my laptop would no longer print to the university printers. When I interrupted the slumber of the tech “support” staff to troubleshoot, they informed me that faculty was no longer allowed to print from their personal (that word again) computers from their offices, even if the university didn’t provide computers. So, I bought a printer for $50 and put it in my office next to where my computer would sit.

In one act of lunacy, the university banned color printing. When I noticed that my senior colleague responsible for teacher credentialing was hand-coloring documents for the state licensing board with colored pencils, I took the damned printer off my desk and gave it to her.

Just as educators resolved one power imbalance by purchasing their own cellphones, it is time for action. My colleague Audrey Watters has written extensively about why everyone – student, teacher, citizen – needs a domain of one’s own. Pennies a day gets you a domain, server space, and private email account(s).

You know what else you should own? Your own damned laptop! Here’s what you can buy for $350 and have it arrive tomorrow. (Toshiba makes great PCs, but you can save even more money if you go with another manufacturer.)

NOW do you understand why Secretary Clinton may have used her own server? Is it the least bit possible that the Federal Government can’t keep up with technological progress or imposes nonsensical rules for its use?

PS: Concerned that your school or district owns your intellectual property? Use you own damned server. For more than twenty years, every single syllabus, handout, article, paper… I wrote was stored on my own personal server. It would be really hard for your school superintendent or department chair to claim they own something that never lived on their network.